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| Illustration by Chloe Cushman/National Post |
Frank McKenna is a rare political-business hybrid. As a three-term Liberal premier of New Brunswick from 1987 to 1997, his passion for business was reflected in his majority governments balancing the provincial budget and creating tax incentives for corporate investments. Now, as deputy chair of TD Bank Group for the past decade, 68-year-old McKenna’s passion is for public policy, which the bank allows — and encourages — him to pursue.
Chief among his activities is being an advocate for TransCanada Corp.’s Energy East project that would deliver 1.1 million barrels of oil from Alberta and Saskatchewan, through Quebec, and onto a deep-water marine terminal in McKenna’s home province of New Brunswick. Although he supports the idea of a carbon tax and renewable energy — and serves as board chairman of Brookfield Asset Management, which he notes holds the largest portfolio of North America’s private hydroelectric assets — he says Canada is still a gas and oil producer and should be extracting maximum economic rent from these resources. “We’re losing about $30 billion a year in monies that should be going to Canadian governments and Canadian shareholders,” he says. “In Eastern Canada, we’re importing about 700,000 barrels a day of foreign oil. It’s a ridiculous situation.”
Canadian Chamber of Commerce CEO and president Perrin Beatty says McKenna embodies the virtues of the most successful businesspeople, who “see well beyond the balance sheet, and have a broad understanding of Canadian society, have wide interests, and are open and accessible.”
Beatty adds that McKenna, who briefly represented Canada in Washington, D.C., as ambassador in the Paul Martin years, is “highly respected” within the business community and that was demonstrated last December when the chamber decided to get involved in the Syrian refugee-resettlement process. “The first person I called was Frank McKenna. He immediately accepted and got behind it, and was a great asset,” says Beatty, who served in the federal Cabinet in three Progressive Conservative governments. “Lending his name and TD Bank’s name created a sense of momentum for the business community to get behind this initiative.”
Having served on more than 50 corporate boards since leaving the NB premier’s job, McKenna has amassed an enviable Rolodex of the business and political elite, including former U.S. presidents George W. Bush and Bill Clinton who have attended his annual networking event at Fox Harbour Resort in Nova Scotia. McKenna has also hosted dozens of TD corporate events with his friend Hillary Clinton, and hopes that she, and not the “isolationist” Republican nominee Donald Trump, takes the White House in November.
McKenna is keeping an eye on the polls in the tight race for the presidency and control of the U.S. Senate, and will spend the fall regularly interpreting them for his fellow senior executives at TD and elsewhere. “I like to think of myself as a bit of a bridge between the public world and the private world,” he says. “As sophisticated as business leaders are, many of them find it very difficult to interpret the Byzantine world of politics.”
But McKenna, a lawyer, also views the business world as “the straw that stirs the drink.” While heading New Brunswick’s government, he followed the formula that “if you create a climate that’s good for business you create more jobs and wealth, which in turn creates more taxes and better services for citizens.”
McKenna says his business activities have made him busier than when he was in politics. He co-owns, with son James, Glenwood Kitchen Ltd., which makes high-end cabinetry and employs 125 people in Shediac, N.B. At TD, he handles investor relations and business development with the principal task of drumming up new corporate and commercial clients for Canada’s second-largest bank.
Apart from serving on Justin Trudeau’s pre-2015 election Economic Council of Advisors, McKenna says he’s happy to sit on the political sidelines, despite the occasional urge to return to public life. “It is like malaria in your bloodstream, and it does come roaring back from time to time,” he says. “I’m a passionate Canadian and a proud New Brunswicker, and I try to contribute and participate wherever I think it can be constructive.”